Honnleath

Session 10

Having Fun Isn't Hard When You've Got a Library Card

Safe in the hideout, the group loots the corpses of the elite guards, finding three gossip stones and some other generic loot (gold, potions, etc.). Additionally, one of the elite guards—named Mug—had a letter from his wife informing him about how his son was doing, family life, yadda yadda. Surprisingly little remorse is displayed as Gorthaur reanimates the corpses to join his growing skeleton army. However, Grognak does bond with Mug’s skeleton, somehow.

Mira sends her thieves on various tasks, including picking up some scrolls for Gorthaur to record some new spells in his book.

T introduces the party to Hildra Holderhek, not as a replacement to Qarvi per se but knowing that they will need additional healing and backup in the future, and the party’s ability to quickly accumulate vast quantities of wealth seems to jive with Hildra’s motivations. He also recalibrates the gossip stones so that all three at synced and keeps one with himself. He tells the group about the current status of the other Guild Lieutenants: Pennilenn is seemingly oblivious to Chevy’s betrayal, Gog is out of town on a mission, and Barchard Lohi has been missing for the last week or so. Gorthaur secretly manages to learn the location of Barchard’s hideout location from T as well, after recalling that “Barchard” is the name listed for a brown dragon in T’s dragon book.

Driven by Gorthaur’s urging to find a library, and deciding that the library near Broughton’s Fount is probably too hostile to currently infiltrate, the group opens a portal to Rhiverpuhl, another Fount city hundreds of miles away from Broughton. Rhiverpuhl and its Fount are located deep underground and tended by a population of mountain dwarves (unrelated to Hildra). The group takes the Apparatus and heads to the Rhiverpouhl library.

In the library, everybody does some searching, including Hildra on the Dwarf-Net (using the Dwarf-Pewter to browse some Dwarf-Hub, most likely). Mira and Calderón are disguised as students of the Magical College in Broughton; in particular, Mira pretends to be an entitled first-year student who is way out of her element. The party collectively finds several books of note, including an additional book on dragons, a book on ancient symbols, and a book of old myths from the Sansaq region. The book on dragons lists “Barchard” as a black dragon instead of brown, but otherwise does not add much information; library attendants claim that dragons have not been seen in Honnleath in several centuries.

The book on ancient symbols identifies the eye-symbol seen on Chevy’s hand as a symbol commonly included on pendants in hopes of inspiring more exciting events. It was seen as a cure for boredom or monotony, but was eventually abandoned as a popular symbol as the concept of chaotic luck being worse than strictly good luck grew more common. It was an occasional symbol for anarchists a few hundred years ago.

The book on old myths from Sansaq has a few particularly relevant poetic sagas that tell of a violent race of powerful beings called the Ytieds that long ago threatened the rest of the sentient races. The tales are conflicting on specifics. Some describe the race as beautiful, some as terrible to behold, and some as unimaginably foreign. In one of the tales, the entire race was made of eight individuals, and in another the race has eight leaders instead. In any case, the dodecahedron is mentioned as a super-weapon somehow created/found by the current races and used to annihilate the Ytieds entirely, though at some unspecified cost to the rest of the world. The dodecahedron is said to have been given to a Druid clan in an ancient forest near modern-day Hithliam.

Shortly after finding these books, the party is contacted by T who tells them there’s a great commotion at the hideout. The party portals back (stealing the books, for shame) and finds the hideout under attack by some squid-bugbears. They rush to defend the remaining thieves and find that the squid-bugbears are accompanied by a mind flayer and G’hotezhe, though the latter quickly retreats. The party has little difficulty routing the squid-bugbears (though Gorthaur loses some skeletons), and Calderón incapacitates the mind flayer before cutting off its tentacles and breaking its limbs. A few thieves lie dead, but Mira is able to retain—and in fact increase—the loyalty of those remaining.